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But Urbahn posted it immediately, along with two or three followups saying he wasn't SURE the news was true.

The point is, Twitter gives normal people access to the newsroom gossip that previously remained private. That's a huge change in how information is disseminated.

Why is Simon Dumenco so angry about my calling attention to this?

I have no idea, but I have a theory, and it comes down to a different point of view about "news."

News is something that happens in the real world.

That's it. Events happen. They are waiting to be uncovered.

Journalists add value in many different ways. Some are good at discovering events that happened but that somebody wants to keep private. That's breaking news. It's hard work. It takes connections, smarts, and persistence. SAI does it a lot.

When some random guy posts an unconfirmed rumor on Twitter and it turns out to be true, that seems to undercut the value of the old-fashioned grunt work necessary to break real news. So reporters scream and cry and call attention to the fact that real news takes real reporters -- like in this case, the TV person who got the news in the first place.

But where did that TV reporter get the information from? Why was he supposed to wait on it? What "confirmation" was he waiting for -- a press release? The official scripted presidential announcement?

Is that "real" reporting? Or is that transcription?

Nobody is suggesting that Twitter will replace journalists or that anybody should rely exclusively on Twitter as a news source -- that would be like getting all your news about the first Gulf War from CNN. But yesterday's events should make it clear to everybody that it's now an essential news resource.